L.v. Man Not Aboard Flight Out Parkland Grad Expected To Depart This Morning

December 09, 1990|by JODI DUCKETT, The Morning Call

Zelda Otto was still in her housecoat when she received the disappointing news yesterday that her grandson, Tom Litrenta, was not among the 17 American hostages on the first freedom flight from Iraq since the government agreed to release all the hostages. It was supper time.

"The phone has been ringing all day," said Otto, who has been speaking on behalf of the family of Litrenta, 28, a Parkland High School graduate and Schnecksville resident.

It was a day of highs and lows for family members, who were told by the State Department yesterday morning that Litrenta was one of the American hostages who would leave Baghdad yesterday on a private flight charted by former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Connally. The flight was to arrive in Portland, Maine, at midnight.

Officials from Valmont Industries, an Omaha, Neb., company for which Litrenta worked as an irrigation specialist, were planning to meet Litrenta and another hostage employee at the airport and transport them in private planes to their hometowns. Otto said Litrenta's aunt and uncle planned to meet him at A-B-E Airport sometime this morning.

But all that changed yesterday morning. Litrenta and his co-worker, Mike Nickman of Pleasanton, Neb., had gone to the airport but were refused permission to board the plane, according to Brian Stanley, a spokesman for Valmont. They were then returned to the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where they have been living, said Stanley, who received his information from Nickman's father.

Stanley said the State Department did not know the two men were not on the plane until officials checked the passenger manifesto during a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland.

Otto said the latest word from the State Department is that Litrenta and Nickman will be on a flight out of Baghdad this morning, a flight scheduled to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, then on to Andrews Air Force base in Washington, D.C. It was not clear if the flight was one of those being chartered by the United States to fly all hostages from Kuwait and Iraq over the next few days.

But Otto is not convinced this is the final word.

"We are naturally very thrilled by this news, but until we see the whites of his eyes, we're not going to believe it," Otto said.

Otto has received all of her information about Litrenta's expected homecoming from the State Department. She said she last talked to Litrenta on Friday, after the news broke that Iraq planned to free all hostages. At the time Litrenta was not sure when he would be leaving, but said he would probably be home by Christmas.

"Naturally he was very happy, although he said he was not abused or starved or anything else," said Otto. "But it was about time, he thought.

"He just wants to get home and see everything here, because everytime he called he wanted to know everything that was going on at home," she said.

There probably won't be a big party celebrating his homecoming.

"We're going to wait until we see him and then we're going to make plans. He's a very private person and doesn't like to make a big to-do about this," Otto said.

Litrenta, the middle of five children, has been in Iraq since December, working on an irrigation project in Mosul. Otto said Litrenta had worked for Valmont in Arizona for a few years after college and returned to the Allentown area about a year ago. He began working for Valmont again when the company asked him to go to Iraq. He was expected to stay six to eight months.

"In the begining, when this opportunity came up, we all encouraging him to go because we thought it was an opportunity he might not have again," Otto said.